Ludlum's New Novel Is Witty But A Bit Overwritten

May 13, 1990|By ART MCMASTER Book Reviewer

If you have ever read either of the two previous "Bourne" novels you know that the hero is a government agent of some sort who is a highly skilled killer. He is an erstwhile member of Medusa, itself a counter-terrorist group founded by the Army to fight Vietnamese communists. Jason Bourne has receded, his alter-ego is put into retirement. His real name is David Webb, now a middle-aged academic teaching in New England.

So why is David once again "Jason"? What's turned his nasty switch? Someone tried to kill his young family, vacationing in Montserrat. Taken with other clues provided by his CIA friends, it must be Carlos the Jackal. Jason has spent years chasing him around the world. Too many years, if the truth be told. He failed to get him in the other Bourne novels, so he must find and kill the reviled and anachronistic foe now. After all, these two protagonists are not getting any younger. For that matter the REAL Carlos the Jackal has not been getting any older for a quarter of a century now. There really was a C.J., and he really was a world class terrorist. But most folks who follow such business think he died in the '60s in Venezuela. So the fiction here is a little annoying. It's kind of like if a relentless and humorless "Mancuso, FBI" started trailing Jimmy Hoffa.

From the small Caribbean island of Paris, France, to insular Russia and back to the islands, Jason, or whatever his name is - Ludlum actually gives him about three other noms de guerre - has unearthed a reconstituted and equally nasty Medusa gang. What are these guys actually up to? It has something to do with international extortion. When the senior Army officer in Europe is killed, and it looks like Jason Bourne did it, "Carlos" seems to have our boy running right into a trap. Does it work? Not entirely, but now Jason thinks he knows how to find Carlos.

Does good win out over evil? Suffice it to say there will be no fourth Bourne book, at least no one chasing "the Jackal." Maybe Ludlum will now return to the hero of "The Acquitaine Progression," his last really good novel.

Near the end of this book David Webb's wife, Marie, asks him: "Why do you have to use a dozen words when one will suffice?"

He answers her, "Because I'm supposed to be a scholar."

Witty, but telling; this book is enormously overwritten. Cutting away much of the frenetic energy and superfluous people would improve this tremendously. Whoever coined the expression, "the third time's a charm," did not know this one was coming. Entertaining? Sometimes. Satisfying? Nope.

* Art McMaster, a former resident of Newport News, lives in Tampa, Fla.